I cannot, in good conscience, claim that this book is the lost manuscript of Walter Benjamin. Its provenance is too uncertain, its contents too fantastic. But it purports to be just that—and nothing in it that is verifiable contradicts the claim. Let us proceed on the assumption that it is, in fact, what it appears to be. It cannot be described as anything other than a novel. We know Benjamin was a literary scholar, and that he even anonymously co-wrote a detective novel. We know that his French was impeccable, and certainly up to the task. All the same, to publish the manuscript under his name would be unconscionable. And so, for lack of another name—perhaps also, if I am honest, out of a booklover’s vanity—I decided to publish it under my own name, with the caveat that takes the form of this preface. Strictly speaking, I am but the adopted parent of this foundling—still, there are no genetic tests for manuscripts. If the ethics of my decision are suspect, I am confident I at least stand on solid legal ground. As it is now more than seventy years since Benjamin’s passing, the book (if it is indeed authentic) is, under French law, beyond the reach of the Benjamin estate.

I am convinced the Baroness never intended to publish her manuscript: she wanted it bound for her own private pleasure. While the story of how Crossings came to be published—and why, and its history—must be reserved for another occasion, publishing it was not a decision taken lightly. For reasons of provenance alone, I don’t expect its publication to be uncontroversial, at least in the remoter corners of academia or bibliophilia. Having come to know it intimately, I believe there are at least seven ways Crossings may be interpreted: as an imagined story—an anonymous work, therefore, of fiction; as an elaborate joke, prank, or puzzle inexplicably fabricated by Benjamin himself; as a hoax or forgery concocted by an unknown third party; as the delusions of a man in declining health and under overwhelming psychic pressure; as a complex and subterranean allegory or fable; as some kind of enigmatic code to an unknown recipient; or as thinly veiled memoir. I am by now too close to this tale to have a dispassionate view. I must have entertained each of these possibilities at least once, and some of them several times, and still I am undecided.

Note to the Reader

NOTE TO THE READER